A good place to have your old Chrysler distributor rebuilt Call and ask for Bruce He is the owner. They even have a Sun Machine to set it up after the new springs are installed.Very knowlegable on Chrysler Marine Engines.

1. Rebuilding to save money?2. Rebuilding because you like the Old ECU and Ballasit Resistor setup?3. All the above.

Mallory builds a great Billet distributor all solid state drop in and go.Pertronix makes a simular unit.

Have not heard anything neg. regarding the Mallory system.Some corrosion issues with earlier Pertronix but really like the easy acess to advance springs and easy to clean.

Before I changed over I was dealing with crappy rusty springs, rusty reluctor and broken pin. Faulty ECU and sloppy dist. shaft which made it impossible to maintain a dwell.

Now three seasons and NO issue with ignitions... (figures always crossed)

I am involved with Model A Fords. Our club tours long tours in hilly areas of Kentucky and Tennesse. It amazes me that non fine point touring cars still are for the most part have org. point setups. Last tour 4 outf the 6 roadside breakdowns were all ignition related.

I just keep purring along with my electronic ignition. It looks original but much more reliable!

I fixed my old distributors at very low cost. I wrote a big article on it which is gone to old postings heaven. I fixed it by replacing the rusted out lightweight throw out timing weight springs. I used a fish scale so I could measure the retracted tension (1.5 lbs) and the extended tension (3lbs). I bought a 6” piece of spring stock with the same wire gauge and coil width. Is was prepared to duplicate the originals and if necessary use the fish scale to fix the amount of coils to set the correct tension. Menards also sold springs of the same length as the originals for about a buck apiece. These worked fine. I set idle to 5 degrees BTW. The boat with twin 318s goes 27 MPH at just over 3000 RPM and the timing tape curve tops about 25 degrees BTW. None of this information is in the manuals. It worked for me.

All this said, that distributor repair guy with a Sun machine could set up new advance springs in about 10 minutes. He could also clean out the rust, change the reluctors and anything else that might be required. Without the disappearing Sun machines, your boat engine is your Sun machine. I would send it off this winter. If I ever replace the old distributors it will be a fully electronic unit with no throw out weights.